Tel Aviv University archaeologists Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai proffer novel hypothesis, showing how the greed of Homo erectus set us careening down an anomalous evolutionary path
Nearly 3,000 years ago, King Ahab of Israel and other oft-squabbling nations of the Levant came together to face the Assyrian Empire in an alliance whose importance echoes to this very day
The naturalistic painting of the roo on the ceiling of a rock shelter is a lot like Indonesian art tens of thousands of years earlier
Twice a year, conservators and engineers inspect every stone in the Western Wall and use syringes to delicately insert tiny amounts of grout into crevices caused by weathering and plants
In fact the 1,800-year-old stone coffins had been found a quarter-century ago, were mislaid and forgotten, Ramat Gan Safari Park officials say
First shock from genetic analysis of three ancient mammoths: Siberia had two lineages of steppe mammoth. Second surprise: The North American mammoth was a hybrid
Neanderthals hadn't been thought capable of fashioning clever 'Nubian Levallois' tools. Now a tooth found with such tools in a West Bank cave has been identified as Neanderthal
Facilities to make beer go back over 13,000 years, but nothing the size of this facility – built by a necropolis at Abydos – had been found before
Neolithic farmers built one of the earliest stone circles in Britain in the mountains of Wales. When they moved, they apparently brought their ancestral monuments along for the ride
Some experts claim the site is home to the biblical altar erected by Joshua; local authorities say contractor damaged ancient stone wall in course of work
Flutes made of bone go back tens of thousands of years, but this modified snail is the oldest shell-wind instrument ever found, scientists say
Collaboration between Ben-Gurion University and the Austrian Academy of Fine Arts will start by identifying the microbial miscreants – which must begin with cyanobacteria, as everything does
The teeth had been thought to date to as much as 120,000 years ago. But that’s not when they’re from, new study says
The six parallel lines on an aurochs bone weren’t made by nature or a butcher, but by the intent of the manufacturer, whether Neanderthal or sapiens
Olive pits in stone circles found at now-submerged Chalcolithic site suggest people started pickling this fruit earlier than previously thought – but only after they learned to make oil
Snags to creating a park starring Tell Megiddo, a proto-church, a unique Roman legion camp and much more, include a pesky prison smack in the middle and the billion-shekel bill to move it – and the plan to expand a highway
Different colonies of naked mole rat speak different dialects, scientists discover, and suspect it’s because the little rodents despise each other
3,000-year-old textiles unearthed in the copper mines of Timna were dyed with purple extracted from seashells, said to have been used by biblical kings and priests
Hoping to inquire into human-turtle relations in prehistory, a study finds spotty evidence of turtle consumption in the East Mediterranean – and it wasn’t because they were hard to catch
And at least 15,000 years ago – as the first humans walked to the Americas – they brought their dogs along
Beneath the city’s ancient mosque is actually an older one from the seventh century, when Judaism, Christianity and Islam lived side by side
Chopping tools were the real original Swiss army knife of the archaic human set, says Prof. Ran Barkai, but nobody knew what they were used for – until now
A piece of the door-frame of an early church was reused in the wall of a luxury house in the late Byzantine or early Islamic period and has now been found during road work
Yes it was very small, but the insect found in Colorado is so extraordinarily preserved that we can still see the stripes on his little legs too
Burials from 8,200 years ago on a wee island far up in the north contain all kinds of gear for the afterlife – half of which is elk teeth engraved to be worn as pendants
Ports in today’s Israel and Lebanon may have supplanted the great city of Ugarit as the main trading partner with the Aegean even before civilization collapsed in 1,200 B.C.E.
Early modern human art turns out to abound in Southeast Asia. The artists painting the Sulawesi cave wall over 45,500 years ago may have been depicting a whole social interaction between warty pigs
More than 2,000 years ago, miniaturized trees decorated King Herod’s palace in Jericho, in what could have been a display of the ruler’s power over nature – and his fealty to Rome
The stone structure over a river was built on top of a Roman bridge for a single use: Kaiser Wilhelm’s 1898 visit to the Holy Land
For millennia, people have placed bizarre sculptures in nature, with no clear purpose or connection. Why?
The standard way to estimating the missing length of ancient scrolls is wrong by as much as 1800 percent, Israeli scholars find. Why it matters if an ancient text is missing 6 inches or 6 feet
Dogs are thought to have evolved from wolves scavenging our garbage, but now a paper posits that humans hunting megafauna would have had scraps to spare for their proto-pets
The tombstone of the woman who lived in the Nitzana area about 1,400 years ago joins others unearthed in excavations that belonged to Christians interred in local churches and burial grounds
Israeli archaeologist identifies massive siege ramp erected by Muslim or Christian warriors to conquer Ashkelon – which has been shielding the city from encroaching sand dunes ever since
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Jerusalem foothills, the Judean lowlands and northern West Bank were relatively heavily farmed while the rainier Galilee was less so. Now geologists think they know why